A Plain-Spoken Woman

This unassuming book is a triumph of female artistry in the Midwest. Wheatlands: Poems and Block Prints, published in 1954 by Osawatomie-born May Williams Ward, is the first book of poetry by a woman to come out of the Midwest. Ward’s career began in 1921 and over the next 50 years, she produced over 2000 poems and seven books. Her poetry collection Wheatlands lingers with a wide range of local topics from the Dust Bowl to John Brown as a benchmark example of the American Regionalist movement and its ideologies. Regionalism embraced allegedly simpler, rural aspects of life, and resisted abstract modernism and the increased industrialization in America.

Strongly driven by artists from the Midwest, with Kansas, in fact, at the heart of activity, regionalism empowered many female writers to find a public voice. Often criticized as too sentimental, regionalist literature does employ lots of flowery metaphors and pastoral scenes; but beneath these verdant surfaces lies a yearning for reform as well as the desire to embrace the beauties of the Midwest and the natural world at large, understood as antidotes to flashy and urban modernity. Indeed, Wheatlands is filled with poems that celebrate the beauty of the plains, Ward’s favorite place to be.

One of my personal favorite poems by Ward is Differences, which zooms in on life in a small Midwest town. Though only five lines short, this poem stresses the importance of everyday experiences and people, embracing the rural while acknowledging modernity. The first line, “Farmsteads and clustered villages of the wheatlands,” self-consciously contains the name of Ward’s collection of poetry. This is no coincidence – Ward is emphasizing the relevance of rural settings, never letting her readers forget where their loyalties should stay. Reversing the often very reductive perception of small Midwestern towns, “all alike as seen from the air,” is a jab at city people in planes and their sweeping generalizations. In contrast, Ward insists these rural communities are in reality “different as trees if you walk among them.” She further explores the metaphor of trees, making them rich and diverse green giants, by directing out gaze to their “sun-green, rain-dark or withered” appearances. If you turn to the left page and her accompanying woodcut print, you encounter again these multifaceted perennial woody plants: three separate trees summon distinctively different moods and settings. Ward thus forces the reader to recognize an intriguing alikeness between trees and small-town people. The poem below, called The Yearglass, returns to trees and emphasizes this comparison “Of Trees and Wheatlands People” even further. Ultimately, Ward never tires to remind us, it is these very trees and people that urban modernists in their big jet planes fail to see and appreciate.

Abilene Alderson

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